CS 247I: Final Reflections
We’re looking at what we learned this quarter.
Intro
This class was actually pretty great!
After an awful experience in CS 147, imagine my surprise when I found this class taught with real-er design thinking in mind. This was especially apparent in the work we did every day, where we could be creative, output useful work, and express complex ideas (rather than… *rant*). The environment felt more productive and we were given much more authentic autonomy, which I think was lacking in the former class.
I think the small, workshop-styled class worked particularly well. I got to know a lot of great designers & thinkers throughout the quarter, and I stumbled on a lot of creative ideas I definitely want to explore more throughout my future years. A lot of room to grow!
Learning
There were a bunch of great takeaways I got about how to approach educational design from different angles. Some of them practical to my everyday life, while others were more eye-opening and complexifying.
Sketch-Noting
I really liked the idea of sketch-noting, and it really resonated with my creative side, as well as my desire to take better notes in classes. The other mapping or model ideas we discussed were already familiar to me, but sketch-noting was truly something I had never heard of.
There are still some logistical parts to it I need to find workarounds for: balancing content vs creativity, paying attention and finishing notes later, navigating different levels of detail, etc. However, I nonetheless think this will be the biggest practical design & short-term takeaway from this class overall.
I only wish someone had told me earlier :’(
Electoral Politics & Education
I knew electoral politics were difficult to understand, but wow. There’s a lot of drama. And complexity!
One important realization I had during the early stages of this class was how few learning resources there are on the web. The most common sites we visit — Google, Wikipedia, etc. — almost all revolve around this concept of reference learning rather than explanatory learning.
In other words, how do we mitigate the huge disparity in experience between looking a fact up vs. finding the best material to learn a topic, in the shortest time, from beginning to end? In our Explorable Explainers, we brainstormed a lot of fun ways of tucking reference information into a fun, interactive, and explorable process that will hopefully stick with you more than a Wikipedia page would.
Ultimately, that is the role of any teacher: to have expertise in how to best show you information, rather than making you aimlessly wander on your own. Giving students direction while still providing the freedom to uncover ideas on their own, such a powerful and under-utilized idea!
In terms of actual electoral processes and voting, I probably learned less than I probably could have. I think this class helped me realize some of the most common problems or obstacles that get in the way of voting, and ways of helping the general public become more active voters, but didn’t really instill a burning passion within me to go out there and make my vote count.
I can’t absentee vote, but at least I know about it now! Maybe if I move to New York after college, it’ll be more relevant.
Design
One thing I will say was woefully missing from CS 147 was examples of good design work. All of the examples they gave were so… uninspiring.
In CS 247I, I definitely saw examples of design work that I thought were really beautiful, and wished more time was spent just admiring, learning from these greats, or scouring the web for other design content that I could steal or incorporate in my own work.
(I also enjoyed the presentation slides in this class a lot more.)
My favorite class was the day we learned about Proximity, A-something, Repetition, and Contrast, and when we got to play with different visual designs and colors to design our own color palette. I thought everyone’s design palettes were so interesting and valuable in their own way. It really taught me how to analyze and appreciate other people’s designs and find ways to improve them.
I’ve always had an obsession with design languages, and that class + assignment really helped me get a taste of what a Tyler design language might look like!
Yes, I know, it’s Alignment.
Team-Work
I really appreciated my team in this class. We were all really committed to the class and contributed in different ways, which made the synergy that much better. We also had a lot more fun this time around, which made the late nights much more bearable whoo!
I think what made this team experience really memorable for me was having teammates that grabbed my ideas and ran with them, never criticizing but always refining, and never wasting any work. Given such a limited amount of time we had on all of these projects, we made sure all of our work contributed to the final product and it was an amalgamation of our best ideas, thoughts, and stories.
Closing Thoughts
I was feeling more distant from design recently. I think this class helped me re-discover some of my favorite parts and find ways bring them closer to the work I’ve been doing every day.
Thank you to my team, Ellen and Joy, for being great teammates!
Thank you to the entire class, for offering feedback, advice, and for sharing great ideas!
And finally, thank you to Christina and Ben, for creating a great environment for us to work in!
